Soaring (Magdalene #2)(8)

Even if only once a day, I had not taken a single call.

This, I knew, was not going over well. I also knew she’d call the next day. And perhaps the next. She would not get angry at me. Her voicemails would not become heated.

No.

The day after that, my father would call.

He would bring the heat but he’d do it using a chill.

I wondered if I’d have the courage not to take his call.

The truth was I was surprised I hadn’t caved and taken one of my mother’s.

But I hadn’t and I hadn’t because, during my long drive across country, I’d figured out at least one thing about me: she was a trigger. So was my father. They were triggers that sent me down a path of feeling entitled at the same time feeling small. A path where, for some reason, I had no control of my actions. I did what was ingrained in me. I did what was expected of me. They flipped the switch and anything that could have been me disappeared and all that was bred in me turned on and took over.

Because of this, for the past three years I’d done all I could to be certain that any person involved in putting a blight on the Hathaway name paid, to extremes.

Divorce was a blight. My brother had been living with the coldest bitch the west coast had ever seen for the last twenty years. In that time, she’d drained every ounce of joy out of my once fun-loving, teasing, sweet older brother, leaving him a zombie without the decaying flesh but with a working-way-too-much habit. All this, and he would no sooner leave her than cut off his own arm.

Divorce for a Hathaway wasn’t done.

Ever.

Mom and Dad didn’t blame me for Conrad leaving me. They blamed him. No one would leave a Hathaway.

And thus, they backed every selfish, thoughtless, insane move I’d made to make his and Martine’s lives a misery.

On this thought, the phone stopped ringing.

I dropped my hand to my lap and looked up. It was only then I saw that I’d parked in front of what looked like a store, but on the window, in gold with black on the edges, it said “Truck’s Gym.”

I looked beyond the sign and inside I saw it wasn’t any old gym. It was a boxing gym.

This intrigued me, but what caught my attention was a large placard leaning against the inside of the window beside the door that proudly declared, “Home of the Magdalene Junior Boxing League.”

My son, Auden wrestled.

The instant he started doing that, my parents had lost their minds (quietly), horrified that he didn’t turn his attention to something like polo, archery or sailing.

Conrad, an athlete his whole life, had been beside himself with happiness.

As for me, I didn’t like watching other boys trying to pin my son to a mat. I found it distressing. And unfortunately, I was not good at hiding that.

In the end, Auden got very good. He also got to the point he didn’t like me at his matches, and not just because I usually took that opportunity to confront Conrad and/or Martine, but because I tried to be supportive. However, since I really wished he’d chosen baseball, I’d failed in demonstrating that support.

But staring at that placard, I knew that youth athletics programs were always needing money, doing fundraising drives, selling candy bars or moms setting up bake sales.

And I intended to have a massive house sale. Sell all the old in order to bring in the new. And since both sets of my grandparents, and my parents, had all given me substantial trust funds on which I could live more than comfortably, I didn’t need money.

I’d intended to give the house sale proceeds to charity.

Looking at that sign, I tightened my hold on my phone, grabbed my purse and threw open the door to my car. I got out, walked to the door of the gym, and before my courage could fail me, I pushed through.

I barely got in when I heard, “Nice ride.”

I looked to my left to see a man in track pants and a loose fitting tank top that had openings that hung low down his sides almost to his waist, this exposing the muscled ridges of his ribs. He was staring out the window toward my car.

I had a black Mercedes SLK 350. A beautiful car. A car I loved. A car that was ridiculous for a mother of two and in a few months might be ridiculous for a winter in Maine.

“Thank you,” I replied.

“Need help?”

This came from another direction and I turned my head again to see a man approaching me.

He was tall, taller than Conrad, taller than Mickey (who was also taller than Conrad). He was built. He was rough.

And he was gorgeous.

Men from Maine.

Who knew?

“Hello,” I replied as he kept coming my way. “I’m looking for someone who knows something about the boxing league.”

“Which one?” he asked.

In this sleepy town, there was more than one?

“The junior one,” I answered.

He stopped several feet in front of me and crossed his arms on his chest. “That’d be me.”

“Oh, excellent,” I mumbled, staring at him, thinking he was almost as handsome as Mickey (but not quite), which was a feat.

“You got a kid you wanna enroll?” he queried.

“No, my son wrestles,” I told him, straightening my shoulders proudly. A mom’s reflex action, the kind any mom should have (in my opinion), even if she wasn’t all that thrilled with his chosen endeavor.

He grinned. It, as well, was almost as devastating as Mickey’s. But not quite.